Healthcare Consolidation: A Changing Healthcare Landscape

Increasingly hospital organizations are faced with difficulties such as the growing demand for healthcare, staff shortages and funding restrictions to significant patient backlogs. The quest to find innovative ways to help streamline healthcare while improving patient outcomes is becoming ever more challenging.

Healthcare consolidation aims to integrate key service pathways or entire hospital networks to maximize resources and minimize costs. But what is healthcare consolidation? What are the benefits? And how can collaborating with an experienced MedTech company like Olympus help to optimize and support the consolidation process?

A growing need for healthcare consolidation

With increasingly ageing populations, demographic shifts and rising care costs, the pressure on hospital organizations is ever-increasing. And with large swathes of patients needing critical and immediate care throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many hospital organizations became initially overwhelmed and now face significant backlogs for routine procedures and appointments.

For example, many cancer screening appointments could not continue as normal through the pandemic. As a result, patients are now being diagnosed at a more advanced stage, which is not good for patient outcomes: In Europe, up to 1 in every 2 people with cancer symptoms has not been referred for diagnosis1, while in the UK alone, it is estimated that there will be a 15.3–16.6 % increase in colorectal cancer deaths in the next five years due to suspended cancer screenings and a growing backlog of referrals2.

This is a huge concern around the world that places significant stress on patients, as well as an additional financial burden on healthcare systems. Could healthcare consolidation be part of the answer?

Benefits of healthcare consolidation

While the trend for multi-hospital networks has grown over the last few years, an increasing number of hospital organizations are looking to consolidate operationally to provide greater access and expertise to patients, and strategically to improve overall costs by combining finances and focusing expenditure.

Operational consolidation offers several potential benefits to hospital organizations (Figure 1) to help increase purchasing power and reduce operational redundancies. The positive consequence is the substantial operating cost-savings to the newly consolidated healthcare network, in addition to improving quality and care for patients and clinical staff.

Figure 1: Healthcare consolidation: The potential benefits of operational healthcare consolidation can have a positive impact on patients, clinical and non-clinical staff alike.

In the UK, Greater Manchester (GM) has seen significant success in consolidation, with the operational merger of several NHS trusts. In 2015, Greater Manchester signed a historic devolution deal to give local healthcare organizations the freedom to prioritise and allocate government funding based on the needs and requirements of the local population3. As part of this deal, a strategic and operational merger formed the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSC).

Olympus collaborated with GMHSC throughout, offering expert advice and solutions to help streamline the consolidation process. In 2020, Olympus partnered with GM and Fairfield General Hospital, Bury to provide a complete solution for a new endoscopy unit. This not only helped to recover endoscopy backlogs following the disruption caused by the pandemic, but the additional capacity enabled increased screening to help earlier diagnosis of colorectal malignancies, leading to improved patient outcomes.

Summary

With the growing success of consolidation, the healthcare landscape looks set to change considerably. While the consolidation process can be lengthy and complex, collaborating with an established MedTech company like Olympus may alleviate many of the pressures faced by hospital organizations.

As a result of its diverse experience tackling many important industry trends and challenges such as crisis management, digitalization, or value-based healthcare, Olympus offers support and solutions to help healthcare organizations undergoing consolidation.

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References

1.???One million cancer cases undiagnosed in Europe due to pandemic, new study shows. McMahon, M. Euronews (2021) https://www.euronews.com/2021/05/12/one-million-cancer-cases-undiagnosed-in-europe-due-to-pandemic-new-study-shows

2.???The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer deaths due to delays in diagnosis in England, UK: a national, population-based, modelling study. Maringe, C, Spicer, J, Morris, N, Purushotham, A, Nolte, E, Sullivan, R, Rachet, B, Aggarwal, A. The Lancet Oncology (2020)

About Devolution, Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership Greater Manchester Health & Social Care Partnership | About devolution (gmhsc.org.uk)